Chapter 1

             The pack of runners – young, lithe, legs flashing in unison – surged down the sidewalk between the stately red brick buildings at Mt. Lehr Academy, sunlight filtering through the trees to spangle them with dappled light. There were ten of them, seven boys and three girls, rounding the corner at the edge of the school grounds and racing up Viewmont Drive. 

             In the middle of the pack, Nikki kept pace easily. She looked sidelong at the other runners. They seemed to be working hard, sweating in the late August sun. If she wanted to, she could kick in some speed and pass all of them. But she didn’t want them staring at her like she was a freak even more than they already did. She smiled secretly. Let them think they could keep up. 

             Just ahead, the street ended in a T intersection. Normally they veered left here, but Mac, their team captain holding down the lead, had announced they would try a new route, and they always followed him, even Nikki, who liked to choose her own path. 

             A new route. It was Nikki’s idea, and Mac had been easy to convince, a throw-away challenge to just continue on for a change, keep going up the hill. But could he do it? Could he go past that invisible barrier that made her stomach churn and her head ache every time they neared it? Or was it just her?

             No cars passed them. Just a couple of houses sat this far up the hill, huge oaks in their front yards spreading their limbs over the street, forming a canopy of leafy shade. At the last moment, just where the street ended, the pack of runners seemed to hesitate in mid-step. Then, without a word of discussion, they peeled off in twos and threes, all of them veering left, until only two remained: Mac – and Nikki, keeping pace right behind him, continuing past the end of the road and onto a trail that instantly narrowed as it wound around boulders and up the hillside through scrubby trees. 

             Nikki felt it the moment she passed through the barrier: a resistance, invisible in the air. What the hell? The force of it dried her throat out and made her swallow bile, peeled at her eyes until they felt like cocktail onions.

Just ahead of her, Mac didn’t make a sound. He didn’t slow.

             Nikki tried to match her startled breathing to his. How could he not feel it? Ignore it, she told herself. Admire the scenery. And gradually the feeling in her stomach went away. She was able to blink tears back into her eyes as the pain throbbing at her temples lessened, and she could look around at the empty hillside with interest. 

             So this is the forbidden zone. She laughed softly at herself. Dumb name. But here they were.

             At first the trail seemed like just a nice place to walk a dog or listen to the sound of the nearby creek. But the powdered dirt quickly grew rocky and uneven. Then the path disappeared altogether, leaving them to pick their way through boulders and brambles on an ever-steeper slope. And it was hot out here.

              Mac came to a stop and put his hands on his hips, catching his breath. He was tall and slim, deeply tanned. He looked like he had been working on someone’s farm all summer. Nikki didn’t let him see her stare, but this was a good chance to study him. It wasn’t a chore at all.

             The aura surrounding him was distracting, bigger than ever. She made herself ignore the haze of bright blue to see if anything else about him had changed since last May. His black hair was a little longer. A stray breeze coming up from the bay ruffled it and he pushed it out of his eyes, dark and intense even in the hot afternoon sun, taking everything in. 

             He was alert, and with every movement of his head, his aura bobbed and pulsed with brightness. “I guess you’re right. No one ever comes up here.”

             It all seemed fascinating to him, and now he focused on her, examining her, eyes level with the top of her hair. Nikki was tall, but he was gangly tall, basketball player tall. She wiped her damp brow with her forearm, wishing he’d go back to looking at the hillside. Her green and gold tank top was dark with sweat. So was his, she reasoned with herself. 

             Mac’s gaze settled on her hair. She’d given up trying to dye it darker or make it look like the hair of every other Black girl she knew and over the summer had decided to just let it do what it wanted, resulting in a riotous mop of tight, yellow-white curls that stood up from the top of her head. 

             She tugged at a curl, wishing he would just say something so she could answer back, something cutting or funny or maybe gracious if he was nice and she believed him. Instead she looked around at the deserted hillside and said what she’d been thinking all summer, all the times she’d almost come up here on her own but hadn’t, because that would have been a little too spooky. “Look around. Beautiful day. It doesn’t make sense. Where are all the hikers? The dog-walkers and bird watchers. There’s no one here.”

             Mac was nodding slowly. He turned to stare up at the forested peak of Mt. Lehr. Carefully raising his hands, he touched his own temples lightly. “There’s something about this place. Something that made everyone else take a different route.” Wincing a little, he smiled sidelong at her, and Nikki had to admit that it was a good smile, friendly, honest. It didn’t hurt that Mac had really nice lips. She liked that his teeth weren’t perfectly straight like all the rich kids who filled their classes. 

             No remark about her hair. Probably he hadn’t even noticed it. Probably he didn’t see her that way at all. This was the first time they’d ever been alone together, Nikki and Mac, but still: all last year she’d watched him, wondering if it was her imagination, if he really was watching her too. 

             If he saw what she saw. 

             Here was her chance to find out. Nikki turned away from the peak, giving him her shoulder as she scanned the slope. “Should we start back? There’s no more trail. I don’t want to bite it out here.”

             “Bite it,” Mac smiled, tasting her words. He considered, looking ahead and then back. “I think if we keep walking, we’ll run into the creek eventually. We should end up above the school. We can’t be the first who’ve come up here. There’s got to be some way down the hill.”

             She could feel him wanting her to agree. So, okay, she could be agreeable. Here it was, the first week of school, they were seniors, and they were already skipping cross-country practice to explore together. An excellent way to start the year. 

             Just like everyone else, Nikki wanted to get a lot out of this year: a college scholarship to San Isobal State. Maybe a boyfriend. The normal things. But not everything was normal, and more than anything else, she wanted answers about the not-normal things. The weird things.

             Right in front of her, Mac Balthasar was surrounded by a glowing blue aura, three times larger than it had been last year, a layer of blue extending inches out from his skin, rising a hand’s-breadth above the top of his head.

No one else talked about auras or seemed to see them. No one else had had one at all until about a year ago, and then one day she’d seen a rosy sheen surrounding a girl in her English class, a pink haze shining around some of the juniors and seniors. Even a few people in town had the thin pink shells of light. Her boss at the diner, Lenny, had a violet one.

             But only Mac’s was blue.

             And except for one other person, only Nikki’s was yellow.

             Once in PE she had tried to point them out to some of the girls in the locker room, and they’d looked at her all embarrassed and pissed off. Okay, so her timing might not have been great.

             Then last spring she had caught Mac watching people in the cafeteria, his eyes scanning the room, his gaze stopping briefly at all the kids with the auras. He could see them too.

             Signing up for the cross-country team was a way to get closer to him. It didn’t hurt that she could run like the wind – always had. It gave her an excuse, a casual chance just like she had here to talk to him about the auras.

So why didn’t she? She walked along behind him for a while as he threaded his way around the prickly bushes that grew on the slope, trying to figure out what to say. He’d found a deer trail that went more or less in the right direction. His strides were long and loose and careful all at once, graceful even. Nikki tore her eyes away from his body and paid attention to her own feet.

             Just say it. Something casual, like What’s with all the auras? Her heart sped up, tipping her toward anxiety, and she forced herself to relax. Breathe. It smelled good here, sun-warmed earth, pine needles, fresh air blowing up from the northern tip of San Francisco Bay. It was nice to be away from the school, from the noise and the crowds and the scared-looking brand new freshmen moving into the dorms and standing wide-eyed in the cafeteria. And she had to admit it, being here with Mac made it even nicer.

             They started up a scrubby dirt ridge that quickly got steep enough that she had to reach for handholds, roots and branches in the manzanita scrub. Scree and loose pebbles trickled past her from Mac’s sliding steps, each one a rush of clattering sound. Scrabbling against losing traction, Nikki scraped her hands against the ground. There had to be an easier way back to the school. Her shorts and tank top were coated with dust, and her hands and arms had gone gray with it. “Hey!” Nikki called out to Mac. “Wait!” God, she sounded like a whiny girly-girl, afraid to be left behind.

             Above her, he had turned his back and was staring out at whatever lay on the far side of the ridge. When she had finally picked her way up to him, she followed his gaze, sighting down the slope. 

Silver water gleamed in the distance, past the rooftops and tree-lined streets of San Isobal. From here she could see much closer the classrooms and dormitory of the school, and clearest was Friendly Hall, straight down the hill from them, its top floor just visible through the trees. She narrowed her eyes, peering. What was that on the roof? A greenhouse?

             Beside her, Mac sounded relieved. “I told you we could find a way back to the school.”

             Nikki assessed the thick patch of woods separating them from the buildings below. “We’re not there yet. We still have a ways to go.”

             He opened his mouth to answer. Then his gaze slid over her skin. He’d given her that measuring look before. She waited until he raised his eyes to her face and said, “See anything you like?”

             Mac’s gaze slid away and he quickly lowered his head.

             Too much. He was supposed to say something back, something funny or flirty. Nikki’s laugh was nervous as she touched his shoulder with one finger. “Hey! I was just joking. I know what you were looking at.”

             When he finally met her eyes again, caution warred with surprise in his expression. “You do?”

             Folding her arms, Nikki made herself take the plunge. She challenged, “Tell me you don’t see it. Mine’s yellow. Yours is blue.”

             He blinked, speechless.

             She didn’t back off. “You know what I’m talking about.”

             The deserted slope was silent except for the tiny, rushing sound of the breeze and the far-away scream of a blue jay. Nikki waited for Mac to react. There was nowhere for him to escape to, the way he usually did when she pinned him with her stare at school. It was just the two of them here, and they didn’t need to pretend that this was about flirting or who was the faster runner or any of that. She held out her arm between them. The lemon yellow glow was bigger today than it had ever been before, lighting her up even in broad daylight.

             Hesitantly, Mac held out his own arm, extending it so that it was stretched alongside hers. The blue around his skin was neon bright. How could anyone miss it?

             An almost irresistible impulse made her turn her arm and clasp his wrist. He tried to pull away for a second, then gave in and let his long fingers slide around her forearm.

             Some kind of electric energy passed between them that sent a shiver right down to her soles. For a moment, their auras glowed side by side. Slowly the blue and yellow began to flow around each other, intertwining, circling, almost a paisley pattern. Nikki’s heart started to race. She looked up from their clasped arms to find Mac staring at her face.

             “Do you feel that?” he breathed.

             She swallowed to get some moisture in her mouth. “Yes. It’s like we’re—” She  wanted to say joined. Would it feel like this if she touched someone else with an aura? Somehow, Nikki doubted it. The word joined was embarrassing. She pulled away from him.

             She needed to think about this, without his eyes watching her so intently. Nikki scanned around, grateful that this side of the ridge the hillside was forested, and it sloped downward gradually. She spotted what looked like a deer trail and started down it, her back to the boy following her. The colors! The swirling together! Her cheeks were burning.

***

             Awareness stirred to life. The spirit recognized the boy, here at last, close enough to reach out a thousand thousand tendrils and feel him, his life and, within his quickness, his blood. The blood was recognized. The spirit would have opened its eyes, but it did not have eyes. It did not have need of eyes. It knew all that happened on the mountainside and beneath it. And here, finally, was the halfling it had been promised. The one called Malachi had come.

             The spirit did not have ears, but a voice lost to many seasons still resonated within it: Take my son, Kai. Take my son, Malachi. Protect him.

             But the blood given in sacrifice had not been sufficient. It had not been right.

             More was owed.

             More would be taken.

***

 

             “What just happened?” Mac called after her as Nikki fled.

             She didn’t want to turn and face him, to put into words what she’d just seen their auras do, and her feet took her away from him faster. “I don’t know,” she admitted, not caring if the words reached him. “But I know someone who does.”

             “Who?” He gasped the question, breathless. He was making an effort to keep up, and now that he wanted to talk about it, why was she running away?

             The colors intertwining, dazzling, still burned into her brain. “Sylver,” she admitted.

             “Him?” He scoffed the word, and to punctuate it, his shoes thudded at the earth behind her. “Because he’s got a yellow glow too?”

             Glow. He called it a glow. That was cute. The old man’s aura was faint, but Mac had just admitted he’d seen it. She turned in mid-step and faced him again. “You know that’s not why.”

             He halted, watching her, eyes lidded in what looked like caution or fear.

             With a surge of daring, Nikki called him out. “Everyone Professor Sylver chose for his senior seminar has an aura. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.” She could picture the circle of students in this morning’s class, the first day of the new school year, all of them glowing like bulbs on a Christmas tree. Sylver had kept his distance, always with some good reason to stay across the room, but for the whole hour she’d felt him watching her.

             “I noticed.” Mac sounded hesitant. He took a step closer to her, lowering his voice. “I notice lots of things.”

             “Like what?” Now they were getting somewhere, even if she had to drag him into the conversation kicking and screaming. She shifted on the trail. It was cooler here under the trees, and quiet. The far-away sound of a truck shifting gears way down the hill on the highway floated up to them.

             “Like,” Mac licked his lips nervously as he neared her, “like you said, the students he chose for the senior seminar all have auras, all pink except for you and me. And no one else seems to see them. And . . . .” he paused, then squared his shoulders. “Professor Sylver is watching you and avoiding you at the same time.”